Grazer Kunstverein, 2018

‘Niamh O’Malley’s artwork reveals a profound appreciation for the act of trying. Trying to catch a certain slant of light, trying to prove a pattern or uncover a composition, trying to fathom a mountain, trying to hold time still. Working with the moving image, mark making and sculptural materials such as glass and wood, O’Malley’s work attempts to contain and reflect the weight and wonder of the world in its becoming. It is the act of trying, in the face of predictable failure, that gives way to conviction and a sense of hope within the artist’s work. Full of reflection, both literal and metaphorical, filled with absence and framed by negative space, O’Malley’s work asserts something unstoppable about the human spirit, something that neither distance nor death can extinguish.

Foiled Glass is O’Malley’s first major exhibition in Austria. It includes the presentation of a selection of video and sculptural work dating from 2013 to the present, and a new site-specific painting along the exterior of the Grazer Kunstverein.’

Exhibition Text,Kate Strain 2018

Curated by Kate Strain

http://www.grazerkunstverein.org/

Photography by Christine Winkler

Shape, 2017 HD Video, 4:3, 10 min 36 sec loop, silent

'shape' is a video work in which O’Malley feigns the role of choreographer. Flat abstract shapes enter the frame and move calmly across a grey plane. Occasionally lines and curves settle into what appear to be deliberate arrangements. These allusive compositions shift onwards, inevitably swallowed by some barely discernible rhythmic drift. This transient image-making is possible due to surface tension in the molecular space where sky meets water.

Douglas Hyde Gallery 2, 2017

Photos by Ros Kavanagh

Two panels, rest, 2017

Graphite & filler on panels, beech 1695 x 710 x 224mm

Two panels, rest, 2017

Graphite & filler on panels, beech 1695 x 710 x 224mm

Shelf, 2017

Oil on glass, coloured glass, beech h950 x w1018 x d74mm

Shelf, 2017

Oil on glass, coloured glass, beech h950 x w1018 x d74mm

Foiled glass, (straw) rest 2017

Foiled and soldered coloured glass, beech rest L1500 x w1170 x d120mm

Foiled glass, (straw) rest 2017

Bluecoat, Liverpool

Glasshouse

Niamh O’Malley

10 Oct 2015 – 10 Jan 2016

Curated by Marie-Anne McQuay

Photography by Harry Meadley

Spanning video, drawing, print and sculpture, Glasshouse is the largest solo show in the UK to date by Dublin-based artist Niamh O’Malley.

Originally trained as a painter, the artist’s interest in the construction of images has extended spatially through the medium of glass. Rather than treating it as an invisible barrier, O’Malley emphasizes its physicality – its thickness, its surface, its opacity – giving attention to properties that might more usually be overlooked. In one key moving image work glass filters pass across the lens of the camera, bringing scenes in and out of focus, while in another, the camera shoots through broken panes allowing us to alternately look through and directly at the gardens behind.

This gesture, of looking both at and looking through continues in her sculptures which frame internal architectural features, views of exterior spaces and visitors as they pass through the gallery. Painted marks suspended on the surface of the glass also become part of ever shifting compositions. The device of layering continues with the drawings and monoprints. Often framed with dense glass, they are so completely saturated with graphite and ink it is difficult to tell where one surface ends and another begins. Through her body of work, the artist asks us to consider our role in the exhibition as an active viewer who makes as well as perceives images.

Glasshouse is a silent 2-channel video in black and white, filmed near Odense in Denmark. A fortuitous site with rows of derelict greenhouses afforded the possibility of a lengthy tracking shot where the glass panes could be recomposed and positioned in a painterly timeline.

‘Nephin’ is a 21min 31sec silent video loop in black and white. It was filmed from a car through a pane of glass which had a small black mark painted on it. It presents the circumnavigation of a mountain in the west of Ireland. I wasinterested in the sense that that image of the mountain is constantly eluded; the path of the road sometimes twists the eye/camera away from the landscape, bumps in the road unsettle the image, the hedges occlude & reveal and the mountain itself shape-shifts as you travel. There is no point in the video where the camera settles upon a framing. The black mark on the glass is fixed in relation to the lens and becomes, in my understanding, some sort of extension of the eye or even the pointed finger. A marker of attention, trying to settle on its object, it steadies the chaotic foreground; it is a constant reminder of the intention, - to see the mountain.

A filmic structure is used to examine an Irish limestone quarry, in terms of its duality as both a vast physical site and a non-site, a place built of displaced matter. Smithson talked about quarries as spaces of entropy, and they have a strange energy, they are in a sense monumental ruins, at the service of the monuments (themselves becoming ruins) they have built.

This work is part of a practice which is often about the process of finding or selecting an ‘image’. The quarry is interesting as its’ ‘image’ is produced in response to the geology of the site. It is an earth and stone factory with a negative solidity that appeals, holes that never end, that always hit rock.

The following text is part of response by writer Lizzie Lloyd to the exhibition: Augmented Geology, 09.06.17 - 08.07.17, KARST, Plymouth

0.4 This is the situation.

We are taken to a quarry, the site of simultaneous destruction and construction, to watch the compression of rock through the heat induced expansion of sand – glass. But the longer we look, rock’s apparently inert obduracy begins to morph under the pressure of our sustained attention. Like metamorphic rock, the quarry is pressed upon with insistence: sliding foliates of transparent, coloured and frosted glass glide across our field of vision. We don’t see it, we don’t realise it’s happening at first not until, until, with some delay, the distortions drag upon seams in the rock, warping them in ways we know cannot be true. Though modified, filtered, it is nevertheless true.

These low-tech intrusions of colour and surface undulations, see the world of solid rock ooze, slipping across our retina – liquefying foci and depths of field – returning them to their molten prehistoric states. Rock travels like bodies and language and looks; Robert Smithson knew this too.

A large glass plane is set into a wooden seating platform. It has textures and marks painted in oil paint on both sides. The painting, which is visible from front and back – becomes a limitless translucent form, complicating ideas of reverse, background, and negative space. This single pane of glass has its own depth and underside, each brush stroke has led to a necessary other, a repertoire of mark making.

Originally Commissioned by Project Arts Centre, Dublin

http://projectartscentre.ie/event/niamh-omalley-garden/

Photos: Ros Kavanagh.

A large glass plane is set into a wooden seating platform. It has textures and marks painted in oil paint on both sides. The painting, which is visible from front and back – becomes a limitless translucent form, complicating ideas of reverse, background, and negative space. This single pane of glass has its own depth and underside, each brush stroke has led to a necessary other, a repertoire of mark making.

‘Garden’, filmed in a walled inner city garden in Dublin, is a dual channel silent video in black & white, projected onto cloth-covered screens contained within large, leaning, oak frames. Within the videos, hands hold a mirror which pans and tilts, reversing the normal flow of light and camera movement. The garden is reflected in chaotic fragments; yet there are moments where the figure gripping the mirror attempts to settle and hold an image of the space. Our attention is orchestrated and contained with the reflected image. Curated by Tessa Giblin.

‘Island' was shot on a lake island in Ireland called Lough Derg. This remote location, a pilgrimage destination for centuries, is a site of distance and discipline. The structure of the video corresponds to the natural momentum of the island; an intuitive choreography of rhythm and repetition. The shots are empty of people but evidence a solid and substantial construction of place.

The video explores a kind of drifting memory as the camera tracks silently past a montage of scenes. The imagery is reduced to its most basic tonal properties of black and white, and projected onto a large screen covered in black cloth. The view is periodically obscured by black screens which were positioned in front of the camera to provide interruptions or intervals. These gaps serve as markers to structure the discontinuity; the effort to capture a symbolic space in fragments.

Island

Rua Red, 2015

A large, oil on aluminium, painting, is painted in a tonal grisaille onto a primed aluminium sheet. This is welded onto a sturdy aluminium support framework. .

Deadeye presents a diverse range of work including sculptural, photographic and film work from 3 of Ireland’s most important artists – Martin Healy, Lorraine Neeson and Niamh O’Malley – which touches on issues from the personal to the universal, and in the interplay of various works in the gallery suggests and teases out how the individual exists within the global.

Deadeye acts a metaphor for television and the moving image on screen – the un-emotive presence in our rooms and homes, compelling us to react and connect with the outside world. The exhibition plays with the Romanticism of the dark image, the unseen presence of the tv or computer screen, and its invisible umbilical cord to the greater world and universe. What are we doing here? Are we really doing anything at all, only looking, making, spinning, touching, waving, drowning? What’s out there? Do we imagine our connection with the greater whole? How can we channel these questions? What metaphors can we use to simplify these questions? Is any of this remotely possible? Deadeye seeks to look at 3 artists whose work teases out these questions in various and unique ways.

‘Model’ is a large projected video work filmed in the Royal Hibernian Academy’s life drawing studio in Dublin. The larger exhibition ‘Model’ also included a sculptural screen of glass & mirror and a series of new drawings.

In the video, moving image is used to document stillness and the model repeatedly settles into, and holds a pose. There is a subtle and reoccurring shift from event to image within the looping and silent narrative.

The model is caught against the organizing grid of the RHA’s upper-storey, multi-panelled window frames through which can be seen the treetop and roofline of the city beyond. Functioning as a dispassionate ‘reaction shot’ to the other elements in the exhibition, and to the viewer, the model’s regular shift into ‘freeze frame’ offers a kind of protected vision or distance which periodically collapses as the suspended moments are broken.

‘Screen’ was first exhibited in Oct/Nov 2011 where it was part of a solo exhibition called ‘Model’ and was situated facing a large projected image of a life model. The life model is observed continually settling into and holding a simple pose in front of a large multi-paned window.

‘Screen’s double-sided framework of overlapping ‘windows’ forms a second and rhyming glazed curtain to look at, to peer through and to be seen in and through. The sculpture’s negative solidity both deflects and absorbs, its individual elements become layered models or prototypes for mark making and viewing. The sections of ‘Screen’ are framed in stained oak, they sit into a base of birch plywood and are composed of varying materials.

A frame of black contains the projection. The black of the bridge becomes negative, silhouetted and invisible against the blackness of the cloth screen so that the only visible projected areas are the gaps formed and framed by the structure.

‘Bridge’ was filmed at the Humber Bridge near Hull in northeast England; one of the longest single-span suspension bridges in the world. It presents a weighty and steady structure of steel and concrete which spans and frames both air and water. Each stationary shot is opened, closed and animated through an external structure/filter. The manual shutter action and tentative re-marking of the images belies the apparent passivity and stillness within each frame. A scrolling visual narrative presents unpopulated and silent spaces. The pictorial gaps and absences attempt to kindle a presence, from concrete to water, in a rhythmic lull of image and structure.

This project was made possible with a New Work Project Award from the The Arts Council of Ireland 2009

The work consists of a solid screen which sits standing perpendicular to the floor in the centre of a darkened room. A silent, 5 min 12 sec video loop is projected to the exact scale of the screen

A ‘scotoma’ is an area or island of loss or impairment of vision. It is usually surrounded by a field of normal, or relatively well-preserved vision. This ‘blind spot’ or area of degraded transparency takes the form in the video work of a frustrating shape in the centre of the image. Sitting in the centre of the camera lens the ‘blackness’ remains at the core of the image while the camera shifts and wanders, frequently lingering, looking, but only seeing things by their edges. The solid standing screen functions as a temporary container of an image which slips continually, off the edge.

I am interested both in the limitations of framing and the function of this cumbersome black shape as both a barrier and a gap. The work also investigates an ability to ‘fill-in when presented with a blank; where what is lost or ‘voided’ is replaced by what can be implied or imagined.

Flag’, was produced on an artists residency programme at HIAP, Helsinki. The work consists of a real-time video projection aligned with a large painted screen. The work is looped and silent. A camera slowly and steadily circles a flagpole, which stands central in the frame.

The still and solid flagpole is the dividing line and fixed point in the video. On its axis a bare flag moves chaotically. It flickers and furls in a constant disruption and fulfillment of its form. The flag’s volatile visual plane fluctuates between translucent and solid, present and absent. Instead of flag as signal or sign it becomes flag as chronometer, marking time and responding to the wind with a frantic, kinetic impulse, in an eternal return, or a vicious circle.

This real-time video work was recorded in an urban garden at night. The work consists of a video projection onto a black canvas. The viewing environment is total darkness except for the illumination of a garden by torchlight. The black painted canvas augments the velvety darkness of the night scene.

A transient sphere of light creates a sense of a protagonist trying to capture an ‘image’ of the garden. The work takes the form of an ‘event’ which centres on an attempt to ‘make visible’, to watch, find and capture. The work attends to the limitations of the eye questioning what is perceivable. The light source in the garden is emulated by the light of the projector. The sense of what is being made visible is therefore complicated, ...is it the garden or is it a painting on the canvas?

The viewer can slowly discern a lush garden scene, piecing together the intermittent glimpses of clarity, they can decode an image by re-imagining but never fully seeing the whole. The work is about glimpses, loss, disappointment and potential. The present moment is emphasised, as it is only in the temporary space of the light that the image can be comprehended.

Torch

Memorial Gardens, 2008

Collection: Irish Museum of Modern Art

A real-time video projection is aligned with a large painting; oil on primed aluminium 2500mm x 1400mm x 55mm. The projection is looped and silent; it fades to white every 7 min 22sec to reveal the painting. The work is installed in a dark space and consists of a projector and a DVD player positioned centrally and openly on the floor in front of the painting.

The installation presents a composite of a projected moving image and a painting. The looped and silent video footage consists of 7 mins 22sec of observational footage recorded in the War Memorial Gardens, Dublin, Ireland. The footage is interrupted by two white flashes and fades away to white. The screen for the projection is a large oil painting. The painting consists of a tonal, (black and white) rendering of elements of the projection. Parts of the image become saturated and seemingly stilled as the light lands on the painted surface of the screen.

The Irish National War Memorial Gardens at Islandbridge, Dublin, are dedicated to the memory of Irish soldiers who died in the First World War and were designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens. The landscaping is known for its classical symmetry and formality and the contrasting moods of the various ‘compartments’ of the gardens.

The simple prescribed pathways and viewing positions of the gardens are echoed in the framing and selection of the footage. A couple enter the gardens from the left and sit centrally until they exit the scene to the right. Visitors cycle, run and walk through the scenario, passing ‘spectrally’ through the painted still, or ‘image’ of the place. The work considers the non-event of the gardens as it slips between being a ‘moment’, …sometimes even a perceived choreography, and an ‘image’.

There is a plurality of ‘speeds’ at work, the stillness and physicality of the painted surface and the real-time loop of the recorded moments. The painting is shifted into a space of potential narrative while the cinematic is slowed and made solid. Two brief insertions of white flashes disturb and interrupt the meditative seduction allowing the painted surface below to function as an ‘after-image’.

The work loops, returning cyclically to a point where the video fades to white, illuminating the painting and laying bare the constructed nature of both the ‘arena’ of the garden and the seduction of the illusory surface.

Big Wheel, 2008

Permanent Display, Public Collection, Kildare County Council Offices, Ireland

A real-time video projection is aligned with a large painting; oil on primed aluminium 2500mm x 1400mm x 55mm. The projection is looped and silent; it fades to white every 5min 15sec to reveal the painting. The work is installed in a dark space and consists of a projector and a DVD player positioned centrally and openly on the floor in front of the painting.

The installation presents a composite of a projected moving image and a painting. The looped and silent video footage consists of 5mins 15sec of observational footage recorded at a temporary funfair near Dublin, Ireland. The footage is projected in black and white and screen for the projection is a large oil painting. The painting consists of a tonal, (black and white) rendering of elements of the projection. Parts of the image become saturated and seemingly stilled as the projected light lands on the painted surface of the screen.

The fixed camera frames the image so that the hub of the Ferris wheel sits centrally. The chosen position is distant and observational, emphasizing the symmetry, formality and linear qualities of the fairground structures. Birds fly close to the camera lens confusing the scale of the image and disconnecting it from the frenzy of bodies within.

There is a hint at choreography as the mechanical structures appear to gain momentum; almost seeming to provoke movement in each other. The revolving central wheel flashes and vibrates as its’ spokes shift through their painted doubles. The steel frame moves rhythmically, constantly loosing and regaining its solidity. This volatile visual plane rests occasionally as the painted and projected image align. It then begins its relentless, out of sync, loop over again.

There is a plurality of ‘speeds’ at work, the stillness and physicality of the painted surface and the real-time loop of the recorded moments. The work returns cyclically to a point where the video fades to white, illuminating the painting and laying bare both the apparatus of the fairground and the illusory surface of the work.

The video is a fixed camera view of a park; several paths meet at this point in the park and a lamppost sits as a central marker in the frame. Traffic passing to the left of the image provides an awareness of the urban context and the quiet scene is regularly disrupted and animated as people pass by.

The video footage is projected onto a large canvas which leans against the gallery wall in a darkened space. The video is aligned with the painting and elements of the image such as the plants and trees have been highlighted and intensified by the paint. The sky is also glazed; there is a luminescence and painterliness to the image. After 2 mins 36 secs, the video fades to black revealing the painting underneath.

In ‘the dene, ‘vignette’’ I was attempting to animate/activate a still (image) or a history. With regard to painting, I hoped introduce a temporality into the equation, both through the moving viewer and the shifting imagery. The work can be read as a slowly moving painting producing a visual tension between the still painted landscape and the real-time filmic space. Central park, like many other parks was conceived by its designers as a space which would provide a series of viewing positions from which one could appreciate views as one would admire paintings. In the case of Central Park the contemporaneous school of Hudson Valley Painting was most influential. Since it was landscaped with a view to the provision of still imagery for the leisure spectator I was hoping to question how does transient contemporary participant fits into this three dimensional historical stage.

The right hand corner of the room was already naturally delineated by two faux pillars and encompassed two windows. This area, including the square cornice of the ceiling, right down to the floor, was painted white. A viewing point was then chosen towards the centre of the room. The view blocked by the window frame and the wall as seen from this point was painted onto that area.

‘In the centre of the main room of the Casino Luxembourg facing the spectacular valley of the city centre, O’Malley first chose a viewing point. She then painted parts of the view blocked by the window frame when looking from this spot onto the frame itself. Once a visitor negotiates the point of view within the room, s/he discovers a horizon, beaming through the large area painted white. The closer the viewer approaches the window, the less of the painterly world is available for the eye, and the more inclination one has towards the real, towards life pulsating on the street. Interplay between the everyday and the imaginary tends to dissolve sharp edges between inside and out, offering a vista of a spectacular kind.’ Maria Hlavajova

Window, 2000

Produced during a year long, Northern Irish Fellowship, at The British School at Rome 1999/2000

The window looks onto a back-yard with storage sheds, trees and scrub. Using a single perspective point on the gallery floor, the parts of the view obstructed by the white wooden frame have been painted onto the frame.